Messages

121

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 28, 2013, 04:52:31 AM »

Well, AgingMinotaur touched on a lot of topics I find interesting, so this is a long post.

On the other hand, I keep coming back to ADOM and immensely enjoy the feeling of an actual world/story going on, even if the prose and plot would be just laughable in any other medium (Khelevaster's monologue epitomizes this).

I really like ADOM’s plot.  For instance, I feel like the whole idea of "corruption" in ADOM is brilliant.  Corruption/chaos/entropy is such an interesting and multifaceted entity in that game.  It is framed as having some characteristics of an infectious agent or contaminating substance, some characteristics of ionizing radiation, and some characteristics some sort of cosmic force that wants to enslave the world (sort of like the way “sin” is sometimes referred to by Paul in The Book of Romans).   

Obviously, the process of becoming corrupted also involves the idea of giving up your humanity in exchange for great power.  You can do what amounts to making a pact with the devil to temporarily become very strong through corruptions, but you know they will be the PC’s downfall, because ultimately the only outcome of embracing corruption is to become a writhing mass of primordial chaos.

I think a similar idea was implemented in another game over a decade ago (the name of which I forgot), except in that one both order and chaos were deadly if taken to extremes.  Acchieving a state of “pure, crystalline order” as they put it, would ultimately kill the PC.  I guess that makes sense, because in a zero entropy state, wouldn’t a person have to be in some sort of crystalline form?

I’d really like to see a game that was built around balancing order and chaos, instead of just avoiding chaos.  And I’d also like to see a distinction made between good and evil and order and chaos.  A person (or diety) can be very disorganized, or even crazy, and still be kind and just.  On the other hand, someone can become obsessed with rigidly following a set or rules or belief system to the point that they become a dangerous zealot who values those rules more than actual morality.

Incidentally, you really should try Caves of Qud. Heavily inspired by ADOM, except the setting is actually quite original, and the prose isn't half bad. For kicks, hack down the zealot in starting village Joppa and read his book of religious doctrines (sells at a decent price, too). TOME also does lore in the form of paper scraps lying about and such, although I never got the same kick out of that as I did from ADOM and CoQ.

I will check it out.  Your last post does illustrate a very important point related to in game lore.  It sounds like what makes the zealot's book so interesting is that, far from being a mandatory plot element, or even an unobtrusive optional element, it is actually hidden. 

In this situation, learning more about the plot is an act of discovery, of uncovering secrets about the world.  You wouldn’t just give these sorts of tidbits to the player any more than you would give them a powerful artifact at no cost or risk to them. 

I think it would be interesting to have a game where these secrets contradicted the conventional way the game world was perceived by most NPCs and reported to the player.  What seemed like the “normal ending” might be revealed to be an absolutely terrible outcome, once the player did a substantial amount of this plot related digging in subsequent play-throughs. 

This would be sort of an “everything you think you know is wrong” approach.  Essentially, when the player made what appeared to be the right choices, they would naively be helping evil forces that seemed superficially good.

Re: reading real world mythology, akeley mentioned it's not really comparable to novels, for instance. While that's a valid point, there were a bunch of works that were written precisely as art, and I'd be hard pressed to mention a literary work that outclasses Ovid's Metamorphoses, for instance. I suspect you'd find Ovid or Homer a bit stale (although they class among my personal favorites, like evvah biatches). Still, you might give Gilgamesh a try – short, sweet, and very ancient – or, for a different beast, and if you enjoy a faerie tale style, The Thousand and One Nights, although that's not mythology per se. Campbell et al., that's all pretty theoretical, right? There are also a ton of books that simply retell the myths. Many are aimed at kids and young adults, but can be quite entertaining, nonetheless.

I’ve read a decent amount about the Gilgamesh epic in the books that I mentioned.  I don’t know, I just couldn’t get into it very much.  I can’t help but think that the reason those types of myths are considered great is because so many later stories were inspired by them and built on them, rather than them being great stories themselves. 

I think a RL story/setting should ideally have randomized parts. Doing that right has proved damned difficult, even though it *should* not be too hard, in theory

When it comes to a randomized story system, what about just randomizing the certain "intentions" of certain prominent NPC's? NPC's would always have the same alignment, like chaotic or lawful, but whether they were good and honest or evil and dishonest would be the random part (remember, I want to separate how chaotic a character is from how moral they are).  The probability might be weighted so that a character was usually “who they were supposed to be” but without it being a certainty. 

Since you could never assume an NPC was honest, speech skills that could detect dishonesty would be important.  Also, if the PC was desperate, they might rationally decide to take a chance and trust a normally dishonest character.  This would make sense, because it is possible that character had been marked and honest that play-through.

The idea of lying to the player in various ways is an interesting one to me in general, actually.

122

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 26, 2013, 08:11:49 PM »

This sounds like a bad formula for a permadeath game.  You'll eventually narrow down your formula to something more or less ideal, and end up having to input the same thing again for every character.  At best the game will remember your settings and you'll just end up ignoring that part of the game.

Yes, that's the point, that you would be able to ignore parts of the game that were so trivial you would essentially be mindlessly performing a task.  I could turn that argument around and say this: In a roguelike with no option to automate gameplay, you will narrow your (manual) input down to something more or less ideal, and then end up having to (manually) input the same thing again for every character.  At best you will remember your previous (manual) input and just end up mindlessly playing that part of the game.

Sure, but your examples mostly regard the interface, not gameplay itself. Though one could argue that messing with the interface is a part of gameplay

Yes, that's exactly what I would argue.  These are parts of the game used to require manual input, and are now automatically performed and integrated into the interface. 

I would imagine that some of these features would once have been seen as a charming part of the gameplay experience before they were integrated.  I bet there were people who used to love drawing maps of dungeons, and really thought something had been lost when automapping became standard.  And maybe they were right, I'm not trying to put them down.  But I, personally, am glad I have the option to automap.

Recently playing Caves Of Qud I switched off the default automatic eat/drink mechanism, because I felt like something is missing. Paraphrasing Xecutor, if you start automating parts of gameplay you might end up with no gameplay at all

Yes, and that's another point, these would all be optional features.  You wouldn't have to simulate anything.  You could kill all those bats yourself if you wanted to.

Also, this whole argument could be resolved if someone would just put forth an idea that would make trivial encounters unnecessary.  Assume an open world game like ADOM where some backtracking is necessary.

123

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 26, 2013, 07:47:07 PM »

This sounds like a bad formula for a permadeath game.  You'll eventually narrow down your formula to something more or less ideal, and end up having to input the same thing again for every character.  At best the game will remember your settings and you'll just end up ignoring that part of the game.

I'll have to think more about what to say to this.

There's a lot of potential thinking involved in even that.

Is it safe to attack this enemy?  Is it worth it?  Which enemy should you attack?  How badly do things have to go before you stop attacking?  If things do go badly, do you run away?  Use an item?  Cast a spell?  Did you plan out your escape in advance?  Are you familiar with this enemy?

If you are familiar with the enemy (which you will be if you play the game regularly), and it is one that is substantially weaker than the PC, you don't have to think much about the things you just mentioned.  If you want me to I can give you a LOT of examples of those kinds of situations from ADOM. 

Maybe it doesn't happen as much in other roguelikes.  I pretty much only play ADOM, so I can't comment on them.  But in ADOM what I said is true.

Let me point out again that I understand there are situations where a lot of strategy is involved in playing roguelikes.  But, I think most confrontations do not require a lot of strategy.  Think about how many goblins/bats/rats you kill in a roguelike.  Those battles very quickly become non-strategical, wouldn't you say?

And I really don't see how you can remove those types of trivial encounters from an open-world game like ADOM without resorting to some sort of scaling (which I am generally against).  Maybe weaker enemies could avoid the PC?  I think someone mentioned that already, but that tends to be annoying if you need to kill them for supplies. 

These sorts of under-challenging conflicts usually happen when you are revisiting old territory, so maybe better transportation systems would help somewhat?  I just don't see how they could be eliminated entirely, although maybe someone else can come up with better ideas.

124

Programming / Re: Learning to be Imperfect an alternative to Dijkstra pathing that stinks.

« on: October 26, 2013, 03:18:19 AM »

Noise on the other hand has "noise" added to the reported location, based on distance, volume and perception of the hearer.  This includes players, we display question marks to indicate noises heard in areas the player can't see.

I really wanted to use that question mark idea, but I was afraid that it would be unclear to the player what they meant.  It's good to see that it is possible to implement it successfully.

125

Programming / Re: Leveling/Experience

« on: October 26, 2013, 03:15:33 AM »

I'm considering expanding this system by adding intentional "practice" actions, that consume time and possibly various components in return for advancing related skills.  So instead of setting up an archery target and manually shooting it and retrieving your arrows a hundred times, that's wrapped in a single activity that expends some amount of arrows (for breakage) and (in game) time, reducing player tedium.  The goal is to have the resources necessary to invest the practice time, much like buying training in some RPGs.

I support that idea.  We are actually talking about automating repetitive or otherwise trivial actions in another thread right now, so you might find that one interesting or have some insights about its subject that you could share.

126

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 26, 2013, 03:08:52 AM »

This leads me back to another (admittedly off topic) question that I have about seeding dungeon levels with enemies and items. 

There are two basic relationships that I see as potentially existing between these two categories of entities.  Enemies and items could be generated independently of each other, so that you might find very powerful items completely unguarded, or you might find very powerful enemies that were not protecting any reward.  Or, you could set it up so that whenever an enemy of above average difficulty was spawned, an appropriately rare item was generated.  Or vice versa.  Which do you think would be better?

I guess the basic question here is this: if the player takes an appropriately large risk, should the existence of a reward be deterministic, or probability based?

By the way, I realize you are advocating the former with your Tablets of Judea system, but I am asking whether you think that sort of system should be applied more generally.

Again, I do appreciate your input.

EDIT: Oh, Zirael, I did look at Veins of the Earth.  It's very cool, and I'm going to keep following it.  Thanks for showing it to me.

127

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 26, 2013, 03:00:14 AM »

@Gr3yling

I thought about it while walking, I could see a game with lots of lore embedded bring pretty fun and integrated.

You could have the overall quest be to find all the Tablets of Judea or some such. You find them in various places, kill or get past bosses to get them, etc...Your level builder could place a tablet on a level and then place monsters appropriate for the defense. So a stealth character could work to sneak and steal, a brawler could bust on in and a wizard could use distraction, etc...

The tablets could have the lore written on them if you tap the 'read' command or click read tablet or whatever.

The key for me here is that it is all ignorable not skippable, I don't have to actively 'skip' anything, I actually have to press something to see the lore, not press something to skip the lore.

I really like the above idea, actually.

That's a cool idea.  Thank you for taking the time to give this line of thinking a chance.

I've actually thought about a roguelike game where the premise was to find and unite pieces of an incomplete religious document that was integral to the way that people saw the world.  As they were found, the creator god who was originally seen as being benevolent would seem progressively...Less so. 

At any rate, I completely agree with you, this sort of content should genuinely be skip-able.  As you pointed out, you should have to go out of your way to get to the "wall of text" so to speak, not have it forced on you. 

128

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 26, 2013, 01:23:15 AM »

Another way of looking at it is this:  I think that the premise of Vanguard's and Xecutor's arguments are basically mirror images of each other.  Vanguard's argument seems to basically be: "why simulate boring parts of the game when you can remove them entirely?" and Xecutor's argument seems to be: "why remove boring parts of the game entirely when you can just simulate them?".

And I think that ultimately both approaches have the same goal in mind (to eliminate boring parts of games) and both might ultimately both be useful, rather than either being "bad" or "wrong".  They are ultimately complimentary.

EDIT: Minor wording changes.

129

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 26, 2013, 12:37:36 AM »

So, Vanguard mentioned that we should just remove mindless, repetitive parts of gameplay from the game.  But I think Xecutor is right in asking whether that is really always possible.  Sure those parts wouldn't be there in an ideal game, but can anyone name a game that has no parts like that whatsoever?

Also, I think one problem here is that we are overlooking what types of input the sessions of simulated play would require from the player.  Anyone who thinks that these simulation aspects would just be an "easy mode" or play the game for you should think more about how they would actually be implemented.  Presumably, the player is going to have to put some thought into editing algorithms which would determine the behavior of the PC during the period that behavior was automated, at least if they want the PC to survive. 

Heck, if nothing else, the player has to specify what conditions will return direct control of the PC to them, right?  Otherwise the simulation would go on forever.  Those conditions could be that a certain amount of time had passed, or, more importantly, they could be that the PC had lost a certain amount of health. 

But that's just the beginning.  A lot of other algorithms would need to be adjusted too.  How low does the PC's HP need to get before they rest, use a healing item, retreat from battle, etc.  When should they use melee vs ranged combat vs magic?  What monsters should they avoid entirely?  I could go on, but all you have to do is try playing Final Fantasy XII to see that there is a lot of strategy involved in setting up and editing these types algorithms.   

I don't buy the idea that playing a game using preset algorithms is somehow not really playing the game, either.  This is the kind of argument that was used against Final Fantasy XII when it first came out, for instance. The algorithms really don't do anything for you that you couldn't do for yourself already, albeit more tediously.

You girls/guys also mentioned that you should take tedious elements out of the game rather than using Xecutor's ideas to make them more palatable.  But, you know what parts of many roguelikes are trivial and repetitive?  most of what you do in them.  How much strategy is really involved in going up to a monster and pushing the arrow key to kill it?  Not much, and that is what you do in combat, more often than not.

That's not to say that, overall, gameplay isn't cerebral and doesn't involve a lot of resourcefulness and skill.  It definitely does.  There are just also a lot of times where you do things that you don't really have to think about.  I mean, there are times when my PC's die from what could be called my own boredom, because I was doing something I had done so many times before that I wasn't really paying attention. 

You know I think that part of people's reaction to this kind of automation comes from some sort of deep feeling that a series of preset algorithms couldn't possibly capture the nuance of their play style.  Sort of the "there's no way a computer could ever replace me" mindset. 

But, I disagree with that.  I think that by setting relatively few conditional statements, you could "play" a character better than a human using the hands on approach.  I mean, you guys who are so into min-maxing seem like you would really be interested in exploring that line of thinking.  Has anyone tried to come up with a "program" for ideal roguelike play? 

130

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 25, 2013, 02:59:48 PM »

Pretty much anything.  Greek and Norse mythology seem to be the most popular, and they're winners for sure, but you can find cool stuff anywhere.  It's all so wildly original while modern fantasy is the same exact thing again and again.

One of the cool things about myths is that people really believed them.  They're not stories about a made up fake world.  They're about the world we live in, seen in the crazy way the human mind perceives reality.  They're based on real things people experienced and believed.

How about this, what is a book on mythology that you would recommend?  The last I attempted to read was Bulfinch's Mythology, which was apparently written in the mid 19th century, so maybe that why it seemed a bit dry.  Like I said, I am open to learning more about mythology.

Incidentally, another book on mythology that I recently read was Occidental Mythology by joseph Campbell.  I liked it more, but I still feel like it was kind of hard to relate to.  So, something written in a fairly plain style by someone who shares the enthusiasm of Vanguard would be nice.

Zirael, if you tell me what this D&D based game you are talking about is, I will check it out.

EDIT: BTW, I just wanted to say that I did read your two mousewheel post, Akeley.  I am still digesting it, though.

131

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 25, 2013, 12:20:14 AM »

Even with randomized Sokoban levels, some people would not like the puzzle, but they still would feel compelled to solve them again and again, to reap the rewards. In this case, having intelligent auto-play as an alternative could help -- the disliked puzzle could be replaced by taking costs. (As mentioned in my comment on http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2013/10/episode-81-puzzles.html )

I feel like Z is right. There must be something that could be done with the idea.  Xecutor was brave enough to put it forward, and I feel like we (including myself) did not give it enough of a chance.  It is much easier to say that other people's ideas will not work than it is to help discover ways that they can work.

Realistically, don't most roguelikes have segments where players often think: "well, it sure would be nice to skip this section and move on to the next?"  Sure you can say that an ideal game just wouldn't have parts like that, but that's not reality, is it?  So, Xecutor seems like (s)he is just trying to address a very real problem here.

132

Programming / Re: Legalized items/exp farming

« on: October 24, 2013, 04:16:44 PM »

What purpose would this mechanic serve?  How would it make the game fun?

What's to stop the player from telling the game that they want to autofarm 9 million rats and instantly hit the level cap?

Using bad mechanics to cover up other bad mechanics is never a good idea.  In this case it would be better to remove the 20 bat wing quest entirely.

I have thought about this kind of autoplay feature before, also.  I'm not sure I would call this feature a "bad mechanic" per se, I'm just not sure it would really be needed in a game that gave the player alternatives to bat farming.  A task is so trivial that a player can do it in a completely mindless way shouldn't still be giving them a useful reward.

But I don't want too quick to dismiss this idea.  Xecutor, can you please tell us more about how you thought that it might be used?  Are you thinking that it is impossible to completely remove situations like the one you described from the game, so there should be a way to make them more manageable?

Oh, and if there was a time limit, that might discourage players from abusing this feature to reach nine million xp by killing bats.  Or, just if bats stopped giving xp after 500 had been killed, or whatever.  I realize that just leads to more questions related to balance, though.   

Incidentally, I think that I am now agreeing with zasvid regarding level grinding, at least as far as this discussion goes.

133

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 24, 2013, 04:02:02 PM »

But again, those are very specific attitudes that I have and are NOT shared by the wider gaming community. It's my personal quirk.

Based on the people I have talked to, I would say that most people in the (roguelike) gaming community feel the same way that you do, actually.

And in some ways I understand that response, and in some ways I don't.  I hear what you are saying, but it seems like there is a deep, almost visceral dislike of the kind of ideas that I mentioned in roguelike game players.  I feel like if the elements I mentioned are skippable (even ADOM's story based character creation is entirely optional), people still react to them in a way that is very negative.  And it seems like if such elements are not mandatory, the response should be neutral or better.

Lets look at a specific example: do you think that ADOM has "too much narrative" going on?  It does have the type of character creation stories that I mentioned, it has a limited source of in game lore (fortune cookies), and it has very limited dialogue choices.  Do you wish those things had not been implemented?

Basically, if you don't like games with (optional) narrative, that's fine, but I've been hearing that for a while and hearing it again doesn't help me very much.  I realize you don't want to add more story elements to roguelikes, but if it had to be there, how would you do it?

You also mention (somewhat dismissively?) how adding more narrative in the ways I have mentioned amounts to just "hiding" text files in the game.   I don't find that to be a very constructive criticism, honestly.  Would you rather the player have to go online to look up this information?

Incidentally, I haven't read the Silmarillion, but it seems pretty intimidating.

even as good as he is, he can't compete with real world mythology.

Really?  I tried reading a book on mythology recently, and I just couldn't get into it.  My personal opinion is that modern fantasy conventions, even in roguelikes, are more interesting than the stories I read.   By the way, I do realize that a lot of these conventions are derived from myths.

Anyway, maybe someone else can help me appreciate mythology better.  I'm certainly open to learning more about it. 

What mythological stories are you thinking of when you say modern day fantasy writers can't compete with mythology? 

134

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 24, 2013, 03:11:34 AM »

Those are the basic elements of a plot. When people talk about story in games though they are wanting to be drug around some predestined path and read a bunch stuff...that's just not what a good RL does in my opinion.

I agree that being drug along a predestined path and being forced to read stuff is a bad idea, but that's not really what I'm suggesting.  I don't know if you read Vanguards or my earlier posts about Morrowind, but I like the way it integrated story and I think that a roguelike could successfully do similar things. 

The idea is that it the player could read more about the game world and its history in books that they found, or maybe by selecting particular dialogue options.  None of this information would be mandatory, it would just be there to make things seem more real.  And it would be easily avoidable if the player didn't want to mess with these sorts of tangents.  I also like the idea of character creation stories, like in ADOM's character creation system. 

What do you think about those ideas?

135

Programming / Re: Roguelike Gameflow - Alternatives

« on: October 23, 2013, 11:57:25 PM »

Oh, by the way, I was very impressed by incursion, Vanguard.  I've only read the manual so far, but the ideas that I have seen seem really cool.  I'm having some trouble downloading it, but I'm sure I will figure it out by this weekend.

Thanks for recommending it.